Ongoing Opinions please for a low power HTPC setup (1 Viewer)

[automationRulez]

Hi,

I'm in New Zealand and am on a mission to build an HTPC for under $1000 that can also record two or more Freeview television channels. In NZ, Freeview is broadcast in H.264 with AAC+ audio.

After reading the guides, I've settled on the following config: Product list - HTPC - Bang for the buck
Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 32MB 1TB
Corsair Dominator DHX DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Antec NSK2480B 380W (Black) Desktop/HTPC chassis
Asus E35M1-M Pro - (comes with an AMD Fusion E-350 CPU )
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2200

I know the AMD Fusion E-350 is perfectly capable of 1080p blu-ray playback (AMD Brazos platform tested - The E350 APU review), so I'm happy there.

What I'd like to ask the community is:
1) Does anyone know how well this APU fares with regard to recording multiple television streams? Would it be sufficient?
2) If I have understood correctly, recording is simply a matter of dumping the stream to disk without decoding it and that even a 5400rpm drive can easily handle recording of atleast 3 shows. Am I mistaken here ?
3) What would be the best remote to use for MediaPortal? By best, I mean easy enough for my wife to use (yes, that's the approval committee )

What I really like about this APU is that on load it draws only 40W. However, what is more important to me is that the HTPC does what it's supposed to and to that end I'm perfectly ok with bumping the CPU up to a Phenom 2 X6 if necessary.

Thanks for your time and I'd really appreciate any and all feedback on my choice of hardware so far.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi automationRulez

Welcome to the forum - interesting mission!

Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 32MB 1TB
Corsair Dominator DHX DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Antec NSK2480B 380W (Black) Desktop/HTPC chassis
Asus E35M1-M Pro - (comes with an AMD Fusion E-350 CPU )
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2200

Looks mostly okay to me. The only real thing I'd be uncertain about is the APU. I do note that if the fusion GPU is not good enough then the mobo restricts you to a single slot GPU (which can be noisier). Something to keep in mind...

I know the AMD Fusion E-350 is perfectly capable of 1080p blu-ray playback...

1080p is not what you need to worry about. *1080i* (which is used for TV One, TV 2 and TV 3) is harder to deal with because of the deinterlacing. I'm not up with the times on the Brazos platform but I'd *definitely* recommend you check on that. You may find that you have to reduce the output resolution () and/or use a simple (read: not ideal, but usually watchable) deinterlacing algorithm such as "bob".

1) Does anyone know how well this APU fares with regard to recording multiple television streams? Would it be sufficient?

Recording requires almost no CPU because the video is not being decoded (video decoding and playback being the most CPU/GPU intensive task when dealing with an HTPC). When TV Server is recording, all it does is takes the data stream from the tuner, grabs the channel(s) that you want to record, and then writes the data for those channels to your HDD. Note that I say "channels(s)" because MediaPortal's TV Server can use a single tuner to allow you to view/record any number of channels *as long as they are on the same multiplex (AKA frequency)*.

2) If I have understood correctly, recording is simply a matter of dumping the stream to disk without decoding it and that even a 5400rpm drive can easily handle recording of atleast 3 shows. Am I mistaken here ?

You have understood correctly.
Re. 5400rpm drives: people's mileage varies. I'm not a fan of them so I'm biased, but I wouldn't make assumptions. Especially if you're thinking about recording 3 *HD* channels at the same time.

3) What would be the best remote to use for MediaPortal? By best, I mean easy enough for my wife to use (yes, that's the approval committee )

Sorry, no comment!
(I read quite a few people recommending the Logitech Harmony series, but honestly don't take my word for it. I have never owned an MC remote, let alone a fancy Logitech one.)

mm

 

[automationRulez]

Hi mm1352000,

Thanks for that!

So that's recording out of the way for now. I was tempted to get an SSD, but at my current budget, I can't afford the luxury

After some digging around, I can confirm for others reading this that the the E350 doesn't seem to support de-interlacing : *Official* Asus E35M1-M Pro AMD Zacate motherboard thread - Page 15 - AVS Forum and AnandTech.com - The Brazos Review: AMD's E-350 Supplants ION for mini-ITX

Would a passively cooled GFX card help with 1080i? It seems like it would. After a small amount of research, I've settled on a passively cooled Radeon 6450 (Product details for Sapphire Radeon HD6450 DDR3 Heatsink HDMI 1GB). According to Rage3D.com : AMD Radeon HD 6450 Launch Review [ Media Playback, Power Draw & AF Performance ], it seems to support de-interlacing and a small amount of post-processing too.

However, I'm a tad hesitant because I found this thread: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...cing-not-working-amd-6450-a-96784/index3.html. On the bright side, hoborg posted in that discussion that his Sapphire Radeon 6450 was working just fine.

Either way, this pushes the total of all parts to $942, excluding shipping, which I'm guessing will get it really close to $1000.
The power draw would go up from approx 20W at idle to 100+W because of the video card, but that I can live with and the case has a more than adequate power supply.

One final question: Would a gigabit NAS be fast enough for recording? If I'm not mistaken, that means about 80MBytes/sec available bandwidth. Normal 5400rpm drives hit around 30? So would it essentially be equivalent to 2 5400rpm drives in RAID 0?

 

[Owlsroost]

You should have a read of this thread too - https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mainboards-cpu-ram-335/interesting-article-power-efficient-htpcs-96977/

Adding the HD6450 would only add ~10W to the idle power consumption - the 6450 is only ~18-27W on full load - see Comparison of AMD graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tony

 

[JiRo]

Hi,

I have more than two-year experience with multiseat setup (see My setup info). The client drives the Zotac ITX botherboard Atom 330 and ION GPUs. Yes, I know that compared Atom + Ion with Brazos is quite impossible, but I want to add a few observations:

• I have never had performance issues when playing HD video, less I expected by the Brazos. Of course it will be the question of how perfomance of Brazos use codec.
• What but you must not forget the performance of the PCU in the basic system operations like - start the operating system, application start time (mainly the Media Portal) and others...
• Last but not least, the CPU performance in computationally intensive operations of Media Portal, where GPU performance is not very helpful - skin, processing of large databases - music, Mooving Pictures. TV Series or when browsing the web (BrowseTheWeb plugin).

In pursuit of the GPU power to play HD content is on the second and third point of my list of mostly forgotten. And so I am thinking about a change in my configuration and I just find a solution where either the equivalent CPU GPU performance, see here. I'll think about modern processors with integrated GPU, mini-ITX Mobo, with appropriate performance and lower TDP - something like Intel i3/i5 or AMD Llano.

JiRo

 

[automationRulez]

Thanks JiRO and Owlsroost.

I gotta admit that I am having second thoughts about using the E350 with the HD6450, especially given that a microATX board has only 4 slots and the 6450 would take up one. I'd like to think that I would not need more than 2 slots for TV Tuner cards. That leaves one more for the future, which seems a little limiting to me.

Based on what I've read, I do have concerns about driver support from AMD. I am a developer myself and work with USB hardware every day. There are instances where I have seen AMD chipsets completely violate the USB specifications with regard to timing. Looking at the other camp (Intel), I see stable drivers and the possibility that I would not need a separate video card.

So I'm now thinking of switching to an i5-2500K setup simply because that means I get the HD 3000 graphics for free (no video card needed), a more than capable processor, stable drivers and 4 free slots. Based on what JiRO said, it looks like the i5 will be a good choice for the current CPU demand as far as skinning and database functions are concerned and I could probably expect to not have CPU performance problems for a couple of years at least. The price for the switch is that I'm now pushing the $1000 ceiling and have higher average power consumption.

However, it does mean that I coudl possibly use this card : DigitalNow . They do specify an i5-950 as part of the system requirements.
According to AnandTech - Bench - CPU, an i5-2500K should cover it.

Here is my new system config: System Config

The reason I've spent so much on the motherboard is because that's the cheapest one with the Z68 chipset.
Why do I want the Z68 chipset? Because it supports SSD caching : SSD Caching article

I have one last question: Do I need 8GB of RAM? Can I get away with 4GB?

What do you guys think?

 

[Owlsroost]

If you need HD3000 graphics, the i3-2105 will get you that with lower cost/power - see Sandy Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (models with HD 3000 graphics are shown in bold).

With 2 cores + hyperthreading @ 3.1GHz it should cope with anything you're likely to throw at it in an HTPC (for CPU performance at least).

Tony

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I have one last question: Do I need 8GB of RAM? Can I get away with 4GB?

4gb will do, but then the graphics will eat away a chunk, so depending on price not being doubled, would prefer 8gb on a 64bit OS.

 

[Owlsroost]

PD is quite correct, but just to give you an idea of what you can get away with, my HTPC has 4GB ram, no swap file and a 1GB ramdisk, so OS+MP+TVserver is running happily in 3GB of ram (Vista 32bit) - and I never get any pauses while the OS swaps stuff to/from disk

Tony

 

[automationRulez]

Thanks guys. This really helps.

I'll stick with the 8GB of RAM.

I was also looking at the A8-3850 which also has integrated graphics. The graphics performance are apparently somewhere between a 6450 and 5570 (AnandTech - The Llano Desktop Preview: AMD A8-3850 CPU & GPU Performance) but again, the review mentions driver issues.

So I'm left with the following choices:
1) E-350 + MB + HD6450 + 1 less free slot. = $810
2) i3-2105 + Z-68 MB = approx. $900
3) i5-2500K + Z-68 MB = approx. $1000

Is it worth spending an extra $90 to go from (1) to (2)? Probably, because I get SSD caching for free. I'm more convinced now that one more free slot isn't that big a deal.
Is it worth sending an extra $190 going from (1) to (3) for an additional core? I'm not sure. DigitalNow seem to recommend it for their Quad TV Tuner, but they also recommend a strong signal. I think I'll stick with a tried and true dual tuner for the moment and see how it goes.

Seems like an i3-2105 might be the way to go. This brings the total system cost back below $1000.

This is looking much better to me now. Here is the updated config : Product list - HTPC - Latest

I have to admit that after looking at this: AnandTech - Bench - CPU, I have to ask: Will I need the extra performance that an i5-2500K would give?